A Very Good Reason to Stay Out of Starbucks' Cafes in California

By Robert Wenzel

Back in October 2018, I posted, Starbucks and the Homeless: A Progress Report:

I stopped by the downtown Los Angeles Starbucks at 445 South Figueroa after I finished my coverage of the Politicon convention.

I grabbed a coffee and a blueberry scone, and sat down and took advantage of their free internet access to catch up. I had already checked out of my hotel room

During the 40 minutes I stayed there, I got a pretty good sense of the current homeless Starbucks' policy for at least this Starbucks.

 In my time there, 5 homeless wandered in, so roughly one every 8 minutes. They all asked for a cup of water which the Starbucks' employees provided.

Three of them used the restroom, which seemed to be a problem. They all took a very long time and forced a line of customers to form.

One of the homeless, a young male tough with face tattoos, was in there for at least 10 minutes. The women next in line eventually started to knock. He eventually came out but got involved in a verbal confrontation with the woman. It turned out the woman's husband was about 6'5", he walked over when he noticed the confrontation. That ended the confrontation fast.

It did seem that the employees did ask the homeless to leave who were just loitering at the tables. They approached one homeless girl twice and asked her to leave. She was sitting at a table and waiting to use the restroom while another homeless person was in there for about 5 minutes. She left after the second request.

The woman pictured above asked the Starbucks employees to charge her cell phone. They refused and she got a little loud informing the employees that "It was a federal law that required Starbucks to charge phones."

They gave her water and she left.

I see many homeless inside Starbucks cafes here in San Francisco when I pass by. It appears employees just don't confront them.

But the crisis is escalating.

The Atlantic reports:

Infectious diseases—some that ravaged populations in the Middle Ages—are resurging in California and around the country, and are hitting homeless populations especially hard.

Los Angeles recently experienced an outbreak of typhus—a disease spread by infected fleas on rats and other animals—in downtown streets. Officials briefly closed part of City Hall after reporting that rodents had invaded the building.

People in Washington State have been infected with Shigella bacteria, which is spread through feces and causes the diarrheal disease shigellosis, as well as Bartonella quintana, or trench fever, which spreads through body lice...

Hepatitis A, also spread primarily through feces, infected more than 1,000 people in Southern California in the past two years. The disease also has erupted in New Mexico, Ohio, and Kentucky, primarily among people who are homeless or use drugs.

Public-health officials and politicians are using terms like disaster and public-health crisis to describe the outbreaks, and they are warning that these diseases can easily jump beyond the homeless population. 

“Our homeless crisis is increasingly becoming a public-health crisis,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in his State of the State speech in February, citing outbreaks of hepatitis A in San Diego County, syphilis in Sonoma County, and typhus in Los Angeles County.

“Typhus,” he said. “A medieval disease. In California. In 2019.”

Would you like a  medieval disease or Hepatitis A with your grande mocha this morning?


Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank and most recently Foundations of Private Property Society Theory: Anarchism for the Civilized Person Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn. His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics. More about Wenzel here.